A dog is not on our radar. A diabetic alert dog, in my opinion, is needed mainly for when your child has a lot of low blood sugars and you cannot catch them before they happen. Some kids drop really fast, and in that case, it's impossible to catch before it's too late. A dog help senses when this is happening and alerts the caregivers. We don't need that (at least not right now. Not saying we never will.). The other thing about a dog is that often times the dog catches the sugar drop before the child has a chance to FEEL the drop himself. I want Trey to learn how he feels when he is too high or too low. I don't want to rely on an animal to tell me those things - and then Trey is 18, the dog is dead and off to college he goes never knowing how he feels. Nope. Not the right thing for us at this time.
The pump is something we knew we would want to do when the doctor gave us the OK. There are many different types of pumps. After our appointment in August with Dr Gupta, he informed us the only pump he would allow Trey to have is the Medtronic pump. We trust him. Yesterday we spent the day in Sioux Falls with the CDE team and dietitians and discussed how this pump will change Trey's life. Thankfully, we didn't have to deal with Jenny, but rather a gal named Teresa. We actually had Teresa the first day in the hospital and we liked her. Jordan and I had to take some online courses about the pump and all of it's functions and then Teresa went over things in greater detail and programmed things that pertained directly to Trey's case. My favorite part of the day was when she looked over his numbers and asked what the food ratios were and when I said "57" for lunch and dinner she gave me a look like "WTF?" I said we were at 60, but Jenny changed to 57 after we begged her to give more insulin. Teresa said "Well he for sure needs more insulin. I will be changing these ratios." And after a few minutes of figuring and averaging, she lowered his lunch and dinner to 40. The most drastic change we've ever had! I am a little nervous for it as I don't want him to go low, but this way he can have foods that I typically restrict such as bread, pasta and milk! We've been begggggggggging Jenny for months ... Five minutes with a new CDE and BAM! Thank you!
I don't really want to get into great detail about the pump's functions but to simplify things, I will give you the jist of it. The pump will give Trey insulin 24 hours a day. We programmed the pump to give him a certain amount of insulin every hour. With the pump, you can change how much insulin is given every hour. He will get a certain amount from 9pm to 4am (every hour) and then at 4am we lowered the dosages until 9pm every hour. He will still get extra insulin with his meals. You recall my first posts about the math we had to do in order to figure out his dosages? That's no longer needed as the pump does that for us. We tell the pump how many carbohydrates he eats and it gives him the dosages it figures now. He will wear this pump non-stop. It can be suspended for swimming, shower, hockey, etc but never more than an hour at a time. (This will change as he grows and insulin is more) He had a hard time figuring out how to potty and sleep as it's clipped to his pants like his CGM. I should take bets to see how long before he rips one out!?
So the pump is on and we change it every three days. Until the 21st, he is using saline in the pump just so we can get used to the functions and buttons on the pump. We go back on the 21st and see where his numbers are again and then we use insulin. It's both exciting and nerve wracking at the same time. We are hoping with the pump his sugar numbers are between 100 and 150 and I'm hoping that with numbers in range, his mood improves!
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